How They Did It - Fast Food in Ancient Rome Documentary

In this episode How They Made It, we offer a historical documentary about ancient Roman fast food and feature a special guest, Max Miller from Tasting History. The episode begins by looking at the foodservice industry in general in antiquity. It turns out that most of Rome's citizens, especially urbanites, don't live in your typical Roman Domus but are crammed into a large apartment complex called Insula. In such houses, they have little space to cook for themselves. So they are forced to go out to find food. As a result, many shops sprang up all over Rome to feed these people. They are part of Tabernae's larger operation, which acts as shops and workshops across the city to supply all kinds of goods and services.